Evan Parker: "Furrow 6"

“Boustrophedon” means “turning like an ox while plowing”—hence the “furrows”— but there’s absolutely nothing pastoral about this track from Parker’s album with Roscoe Mitchell and the Transatlantic Art Ensemble. Perhaps the plough is the same one referenced in Coil’s beloved Horse Rotorvator (1986): fashioned from the jawbones of the horses of the apocalypse in order to eviscerate the Earth.

The Transatlantic Art Ensemble was founded on the principle of erasing distinctions between North American and European jazz music, not to mention jazz and everything else, since the album reaches past even Parker’s free improv past to something more composed but equally loose and unpredictable. The fourteen-piece orchestra—which includes clarinet, strings, flute, flugelhorn, piano, as well as Parker and Mitchell’s saxes—embraces slow almost formless chamber music throughout much of Boustrophedon but they save the best for last: “Furrow 6” is the only track to prominently feature Parker and Mitchell’s own solos.

The idea of a 64-year old maverick who cut his chops on some of the most unhinged free improv of the latter half of the century turning to neo-classical forms and large orchestras might seem like a way of settling into his age, but jesus can this guy still play. His soprano solo at the beginning of “Furrow 6” is quite simply one of the most incredible sax performances I’ve heard in years: using his pioneered circular breathing technique, his lines extend way past what you think they’re going to. While such ceaseless virtuosity should immediately bring Parker round full-circle into more traditional free jazz territory, the even spacing of the notes gives it a minimalist feel, only enhanced by the long drones of the string section that back him up.

Then the whole thing shifts gears, with a Mingus-esque death-swing piano motif and drums (the closest the album gets to an actual jazz rhythm), with Mitchell taking over on tenor in the same vein as Parker. But rather than relieving the tension established by the chamber orchestrations at the beginning of the track, it just casts it further into oblivion. Both the classical and jazz sections of the track manage to achieve similar ends: casting brilliant, unrelenting soloists over a refractory rhythm section to rip a path through the earth.